Whatever it takes as long as the Amnesty law is approved. ERC is in a hurry to bring about the criminal oblivion and any modification to the Penal Code or the Criminal Procedure Law (LECrim) that is being proposed so far is worth it. Pedro Sánchez has ruled out changes to the amnesty rule – which fell last Tuesday due to the vote against Junts – and modifying the crime of terrorism in the Penal Code. But he has contemplated the possibility of tweaking the LECrim and has been in favor of shortening instruction times. The Republicans jump on the bandwagon: “ERC would welcome all those proposals that guarantee that the Amnesty law is approved as soon as possible.”
This was stated this afternoon by ERC spokesperson Raquel Sans. The ERC leader has assured that the Amnesty law “is robust” and that with the current wording it is fully applicable to everyone who participated in the consultation of November 9, 2014, in the referendum of October 1, 2017 and in the post-sentence protests of the Supreme Court, in 2019.
“Everything that could lead us to approve the law as soon as possible, ERC values ??positively,” Sans reiterated. “What we want is to move forward and have the law as soon as possible.”
Sans, however, sees no possibility of the Amnesty law being modified. The position of the PSOE seems immovable. In any case, the Republican agrees with the socialists that “there will be no amendment that covers the future occurrences of any judge, of these investigating judges who are inventing stories,” she stated in the face of Junts’ refusal to approve the amnesty so far.
For the Republicans, it is necessary for the future law to pass the filters of the Constitutional Court or the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), something that they consider would happen with the norm as it is currently established.
With all the possible imperfections of the Amnesty law, the spokesperson has indicated that if they go ahead they will have to ensure its application. “The battle will begin so that it can be applied in each of the cases,” she stressed before pointing out: “We cannot give them what they want: putting the media spotlight on those judges who what they do is invent stories.”
At ERC they are convinced that Junts made a mistake with their vote against the amnesty in the Congress of Deputies. But they also believe that JxCat has realized this, so the modification of the Criminal Procedure law would only be a landing strip for the post-convergents. Now the law is back in the Justice Committee of the lower house and with the Galician elections in the middle the activity is paralyzed, so it is likely that it will take about a month to recover the text.
The delay in the Amnesty law will clearly cause the trial of Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó, considered the architects of the 1-O referendum, to take place as planned at the beginning of April. An amendment that ERC introduced in the criminal oblivion rule allowed, if successful, to stop any judicial procedure.
